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Post by rimjobflashmob on Aug 13, 2016 13:06:12 GMT -5
You are also forgetting the rank of Chief (Petty Officer?), which was the rank of Miles O'Brien. It is easy to forget as he appears to be the only enlisted man in all of Starfleet. That's what I meant by "other ranks" at the end of my original comment; it's just not clear where it fits in. There's very little evidence that Starfleet has enlisted men, to be honest; I think Chief O'Brien was under a completely different command structure for some reason. O'Brien's status was always incredibly vague and mysterious to me, especially when Nog became an ensign and he made a joke about being outranked.
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Aug 13, 2016 16:11:42 GMT -5
You are also forgetting the rank of Chief (Petty Officer?), which was the rank of Miles O'Brien. It is easy to forget as he appears to be the only enlisted man in all of Starfleet. That's what I meant by "other ranks" at the end of my original comment; it's just not clear where it fits in. There's very little evidence that Starfleet has enlisted men, to be honest; I think Chief O'Brien was under a completely different command structure for some reason. What about Counselor Troi; she doesn't have any signifier of rank on her uniform, (at least not so far in the half dozen episodes of TNG that I've seen)? Also, do medical staff have an entirely different branch of Starfleet to rise through the ranks of, because the 137 year-old McCoy who shows up to basically say "Oh great, a goddamned talking robot" to Data at the start of TNG is an Admiral.
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Post by Ben Grimm on Aug 13, 2016 16:24:48 GMT -5
That's what I meant by "other ranks" at the end of my original comment; it's just not clear where it fits in. There's very little evidence that Starfleet has enlisted men, to be honest; I think Chief O'Brien was under a completely different command structure for some reason. What about Counselor Troi; she doesn't have any signifier of rank on her uniform, (at least not so far in the half dozen episodes of TNG that I've seen)? Also, do medical staff have an entirely different branch of Starfleet to rise through the ranks of, because the 137 year-old McCoy who shows up to basically say "Oh great, a goddamned talking robot" to Data at the start of TNG is an Admiral. She sometimes wears a regular uniform (especially late in TNG) and I think was a Lt. Commander. Most of the Doctors have had regular ranks as well.
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Post by Paleu on Aug 13, 2016 17:11:39 GMT -5
Douay-Rheims-Challoner Basically everything there sounds awesome to me and I'm really looking forward to what Fuller does with the show. I wish this comment was more substantive but Trek has been off the air since I was like 7 (I'm just gonna ignore Enterprise) so I need my fix.
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Aug 13, 2016 17:36:12 GMT -5
I wish this comment was more substantive but Trek has been off the air since I was like 7 (I'm just gonna ignore Enterprise) so I need my fix. What about commercials for Star Trek: Beyond? Several of those have been in the air quite recently.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2016 19:23:24 GMT -5
That's what I meant by "other ranks" at the end of my original comment; it's just not clear where it fits in. There's very little evidence that Starfleet has enlisted men, to be honest; I think Chief O'Brien was under a completely different command structure for some reason. O'Brien's status was always incredibly vague and mysterious to me, especially when Nog became an ensign and he made a joke about being outranked. O'Brien is in fact enlisted, he is one of very few main cast members to not be an officer. Which is why Nog even at the lowest officer rank technically outranks him.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Aug 13, 2016 19:30:13 GMT -5
Paleu If you're counting Voyager or DS9, you are way younger than I am apparently. Ben Grimm rimjobflashmob Roy Batty's Pet Dove Counselor Troi is a Lieutenant Commander until near the end of the seventh season, when she becomes a Commander (the rank she then holds in her subsequent movie and Voyager appearances.) This rarely comes up because she's normally not put in a command position - typically other bridge officers would be put in command before she would be, as in "The Arsenal of Freedom," where Geordi LaForge is put in command while still being a Lieutenant Junior Grade. Not unlike how medical officers are normally outside the chain of command (a lot of episodes of the original show have Scotty or Sulu command the Enterprise, but McCoy never does.) There's an episode in season five, "Disaster," where she finds herself as by far the highest ranked officer on the bridge (Ensign Ro and Chief Petty Officer O'Brien being the only two others - more on O'Brien in a moment) and thus is required to take over, this being outside of her skillset - but the incident influenced her enough for her to decide to later take the idea of command more seriously, hence studying for and passing aptitudes that let her get promoted. After that point she could be put in command, but given there's only a handful of episodes after it it doesn't really come up. The confusion about O'Brien's rank comes down to this: He was a Lieutenant during his appearances in seasons two and three of The Next Generation. At the beginning of season four they decided to retroactively make him an enlisted man (a Chief Petty Officer), because they'd also decided to make Worf's adoptive father an enlisted man so there was a brief scene where he made small talk with O'Brien on this fact, and would later show another enlisted man that season in "The Drumhead" (one whose concealed part-Romulan heritage deepens a witch hunt); but there aren't really many other notable examples. Enlisted personnel did not go to Starfleet Academy; it's a shortcut for getting into space but it does also limit the opportunities for advancement. O'Brien discovered a natural aptitude for engineering during the Cardassian Wars, which influenced his move from being a tactical officer - as he was on the USS Rutledge - to working in transportation on the Enterprise and finally as Chief of Operations on DS9. While his seniority and experience has given him that assignment, he still prefers to not be called 'sir,' as an officer would, and is normally addressed as 'Chief' by his subordinates. I didn't have to look any of that up; spending most of the year rewatching Star Trek does wonders as a refresher for this sort of thing.
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Aug 13, 2016 20:46:45 GMT -5
Paleu If you're counting Voyager or DS9, you are way younger than I am apparently. Ben Grimm rimjobflashmob Roy Batty's Pet Dove Counselor Troi is a Lieutenant Commander until near the end of the seventh season, when she becomes a Commander (the rank she then holds in her subsequent movie and Voyager appearances.) This rarely comes up because she's normally not put in a command position - typically other bridge officers would be put in command before she would be, as in "The Arsenal of Freedom," where Geordi LaForge is put in command while still being a Lieutenant Junior Grade. Not unlike how medical officers are normally outside the chain of command (a lot of episodes of the original show have Scotty or Sulu command the Enterprise, but McCoy never does.) There's an episode in season five, "Disaster," where she finds herself as by far the highest ranked officer on the bridge (Ensign Ro and Chief Petty Officer O'Brien being the only two others - more on O'Brien in a moment) and thus is required to take over, this being outside of her skillset - but the incident influenced her enough for her to decide to later take the idea of command more seriously, hence studying for and passing aptitudes that let her get promoted. After that point she could be put in command, but given there's only a handful of episodes after it it doesn't really come up. The confusion about O'Brien's rank comes down to this: He was a Lieutenant during his appearances in seasons two and three of The Next Generation. At the beginning of season four they decided to retroactively make him an enlisted man (a Chief Petty Officer), because they'd also decided to make Worf's adoptive father an enlisted man so there was a brief scene where he made small talk with O'Brien on this fact, and would later show another enlisted man that season in "The Drumhead" (one whose concealed part-Romulan heritage deepens a witch hunt); but there aren't really many other notable examples. Enlisted personnel did not go to Starfleet Academy; it's a shortcut for getting into space but it does also limit the opportunities for advancement. O'Brien discovered a natural aptitude for engineering during the Cardassian Wars, which influenced his move from being a tactical officer - as he was on the USS Rutledge - to working in transportation on the Enterprise and finally as Chief of Operations on DS9. While his seniority and experience has given him that assignment, he still prefers to not be called 'sir,' as an officer would, and is normally addressed as 'Chief' by his subordinates. I didn't have to look any of that up; spending most of the year rewatching Star Trek does wonders as a refresher for this sort of thing. Speaking of whoever O'Brien is, Is anybody actually in charge of engineering for Season 1 of TNG? None of the non-main-cast characters doing engineering stuff ever seem to last more than an episode in the half-dozen episodes I've seen this far.
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Aug 13, 2016 20:48:50 GMT -5
What about Counselor Troi; she doesn't have any signifier of rank on her uniform, (at least not so far in the half dozen episodes of TNG that I've seen)? Also, do medical staff have an entirely different branch of Starfleet to rise through the ranks of, because the 137 year-old McCoy who shows up to basically say "Oh great, a goddamned talking robot" to Data at the start of TNG is an Admiral. She sometimes wears a regular uniform (especially late in TNG) and I think was a Lt. Commander. Most of the Doctors have had regular ranks as well. Yeah, my bad, I think she was actually wearing a regular uniform in the pilot, but the shittiness of "Code of Honor" and "The One Where the Ferengi Get Introduced" must have erased that from my memory.
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Post by Ben Grimm on Aug 13, 2016 20:59:59 GMT -5
Speaking of whoever O'Brien is, Is anybody actually in charge of engineering for Season 1 of TNG? None of the non-main-cast characters doing engineering stuff ever seem to last more than an episode in the half-dozen episodes I've seen this far. There were a few of them prior to LaForge (MacDougal, Argyle, and Logan); none of them appeared that often or were that memorable.
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Post by Baron von Costume on Aug 13, 2016 21:14:43 GMT -5
I knew I was forgetting something. You are also forgetting the rank of Chief (Petty Officer?), which was the rank of Miles O'Brien. It is easy to forget as he appears to be the only enlisted man in all of Starfleet. Well there's theoretically a whole set of enlisted ranks but yeah, they seem to show up and random and in sometimes nonsensical positions.
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Post by Ben Grimm on Aug 13, 2016 21:40:37 GMT -5
I just feel the need to say that this is one of the nerdiest discussions I've ever participated in and I deeply love every one of you for it.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2016 22:02:44 GMT -5
I thought that there would be some kind of important character in voyager that would be the rank of enlisted instead of officer due to half the crew being maquis, but nah, they are all made provisional officers. Which is supremely idiotic. If I was an enlisted serving on that ship(but really what enlisted does serve on a Starfleet ship apparently?) I would be super pissed.
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Post by Paleu on Aug 13, 2016 22:37:24 GMT -5
Paleu If you're counting Voyager or DS9, you are way younger than I am apparently. I was actually 9, I've just found out. Close enough.
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Post by Hachiman on Aug 14, 2016 1:55:51 GMT -5
I thought that there would be some kind of important character in voyager that would be the rank of enlisted instead of officer due to half the crew being maquis, but nah, they are all made provisional officers. Which is supremely idiotic. If I was an enlisted serving on that ship(but really what enlisted does serve on a Starfleet ship apparently?) I would be super pissed. "Two weeks ago, we were hunting these traitors and now I have to call this one 'sir' while I am still on maintenance duty cleaning the holodecks? No! Screw that! They can mop up after Kim and Paris, and I will be the chief Engineer!" It is just further proof that Janeway was the worst Captain ever and that Starfleet Command is run by total morons since they promoted her to Admiral as soon as she got back.
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Post by dLᵒ on Aug 14, 2016 2:46:32 GMT -5
I thought that there would be some kind of important character in voyager that would be the rank of enlisted instead of officer due to half the crew being maquis, but nah, they are all made provisional officers. Which is supremely idiotic. If I was an enlisted serving on that ship(but really what enlisted does serve on a Starfleet ship apparently?) I would be super pissed. "Two weeks ago, we were hunting these traitors and now I have to call this one 'sir' while I am still on maintenance duty cleaning the holodecks? No! Screw that! They can mop up after Kim and Paris, and I will be the chief Engineer!" It is just further proof that Janeway was the worst Captain ever and that Starfleet Command is run by total morons since they promoted her to Admiral as soon as she got back. I'd like to think it was Admiral of Coffee Production & Procurement, and that she was co-chair of lost and found.
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Post by Post-Lupin on Aug 14, 2016 3:37:00 GMT -5
I thought that there would be some kind of important character in voyager that would be the rank of enlisted instead of officer due to half the crew being maquis, but nah, they are all made provisional officers. Which is supremely idiotic. If I was an enlisted serving on that ship(but really what enlisted does serve on a Starfleet ship apparently?) I would be super pissed. "Two weeks ago, we were hunting these traitors and now I have to call this one 'sir' while I am still on maintenance duty cleaning the holodecks? No! Screw that! They can mop up after Kim and Paris, and I will be the chief Engineer!" It is just further proof that Janeway was the worst Captain ever and that Starfleet Command is run by total morons since they promoted her to Admiral as soon as she got back. Who else dearly wanted the last Voyager episodes to consist of Janeway's courts martial for multiple Prime Directive breaches etc?
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Aug 14, 2016 6:57:32 GMT -5
Most of the Maquis crew were given the rank of ensign or less; though, @matt1 - so actually some of the few examples of enlisted rank Voyager crew were Maquis, like the traitor and spy Michael Jonas, or the screwup Maquis Tuvok trains in "Learning Curve."
At first Chakotay was the only Maquis senior officer, and that was partly a political move (he was the captain of the Maquis ship, what better way to say we are all in this together than to make him the first officer) but independent of that he had the experience - Chakotay was a Lieutenant Commander in Starfleet before he resigned his comission, if one takes that into account he was the highest ranking first officer candidate on Voyager at the time. The only other real candidate was Lieutenant Tuvok, who, as an old friend and confidant of Janeway's, would have more likely been her choice in a different circumstance.
B'Elanna Torres becoming chief engineer takes a lot more convincing. She never graduated Starfleet, there's an acceptable Starfleet candidate (Lieutenant Carey), but it comes down to her aptitudes and pressure from Chakotay making Janeway eventually acknowledge that Torres is the better engineer. I think Janeway made a lot of questionable decisions, but incorporating the Maquis into her crew wasn't really one of them, given fhe unusual extenuating circumstances.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2016 8:52:54 GMT -5
Ensign is still an officer position though and any officer is "above" even the most senior of enlisted.
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Post by UnarmedAndDangerousVorta on Aug 15, 2016 16:14:26 GMT -5
Ensign is still an officer position though and any officer is "above" even the most senior of enlisted. When you're staring down a 70 year long trip home through uncharted space with limited resources, making half the people you will depend upon permanent second class citizens might not be the best move. Especially when they are trained, resourceful terrorists who already kinda hate you and your organization for what is effectively massive disenfranchisement.
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Post by Powerthirteen on Aug 15, 2016 16:23:07 GMT -5
Ensign is still an officer position though and any officer is "above" even the most senior of enlisted. When you're staring down a 70 year long trip home through uncharted space with limited resources, making half the people you will depend upon permanent second class citizens might not be the best move. Especially when they are trained, resourceful terrorists who already kinda hate you and your organization for what is effectively massive disenfranchisement. Freedom fighters!
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Aug 15, 2016 19:25:18 GMT -5
The distinction I would make here is Janeway's decision to incorporate the Maquis into her crew - including making two of them senior officers, and others holding ranks like lieutenant and ensign that theoretically put some Starfleet officers under them - makes perfect sense given her circumstances and is a sensible command decision. Voyager is alone, it has lost many of its crew already, the commander of the Maquis vessel had sacrificed his own ship to save Voyager, and both sides could agree on the necessity of getting home, regardless of their stance on the DMZ.
However the decision to incorporate the Maquis into Starfleet wasn't a great story decision - Michael Piller wished to keep them distinct and out of uniform so as to generate tension, just as he'd done for the Bajoran Militia on DS9, but he lost that particular fight.
The Maquis also suffered from being a group whose problems with the Federation were situational - as a group, the only fundamental difference they have with the Federation is disagreeing with the terms of a peace treaty with the Cardassians, a matter of utmost importance in the Demilitarized Zone and along the Cardassian border, but rather academic in the Delta Quadrant, where their difference to Starfleet mostly comes down to being less thoroughly vetted (a sociopath like Brad Dourif's Betazoid serial killer wouldn't have got far in Starfleet.) Granted, Chakotay's spiritualism puts him outside the implied Federation human norm, but it's more his than the Maquis', and we have known of similar tribes (possibly his own tribe) who had been part of the Federation, if a bit isolationist, prior to the DMZ treaty.
So ultimately the Maquis became a more interesting story element in DS9, because relations with the Cardassians were actually relevant to that show, and Seven of Nine - who did not wear a Starfleet uniform, and whose Borg indoctrination gave her a distinctly non-Starfleet perspective and ethos in many situations - wound up providing a more effective tension point for Voyager than the Maquis ever did. (Piller himself would say the show came around when she came onboard, and that was after he'd stopped writing for it.)
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Post by UnarmedAndDangerousVorta on Aug 15, 2016 20:36:10 GMT -5
The distinction I would make here is Janeway's decision to incorporate the Maquis into her crew - including making two of them senior officers, and others holding ranks like lieutenant and ensign that theoretically put some Starfleet officers under them - makes perfect sense given her circumstances and is a sensible command decision. Voyager is alone, it has lost many of its crew already, the commander of the Maquis vessel had sacrificed his own ship to save Voyager, and both sides could agree on the necessity of getting home, regardless of their stance on the DMZ. However the decision to incorporate the Maquis into Starfleet wasn't a great story decision - Michael Piller wished to keep them distinct and out of uniform so as to generate tension, just as he'd done for the Bajoran Militia on DS9, but he lost that particular fight. The Maquis also suffered from being a group whose problems with the Federation were situational - as a group, the only fundamental difference they have with the Federation is disagreeing with the terms of a peace treaty with the Cardassians, a matter of utmost importance in the Demilitarized Zone and along the Cardassian border, but rather academic in the Delta Quadrant, where their difference to Starfleet mostly comes down to being less thoroughly vetted (a sociopath like Brad Dourif's Betazoid serial killer wouldn't have got far in Starfleet.) Granted, Chakotay's spiritualism puts him outside the implied Federation human norm, but it's more his than the Maquis', and we have known of similar tribes (possibly his own tribe) who had been part of the Federation, if a bit isolationist, prior to the DMZ treaty. So ultimately the Maquis became a more interesting story element in DS9, because relations with the Cardassians were actually relevant to that show, and Seven of Nine - who did not wear a Starfleet uniform, and whose Borg indoctrination gave her a distinctly non-Starfleet perspective and ethos in many situations - wound up providing a more effective tension point for Voyager than the Maquis ever did. (Piller himself would say the show came around when she came onboard, and that was after he'd stopped writing for it.) IIRC, the Maquis on Voyager- unlike DS9 and the pre-Maquis group in TNG- were also consistently written as unequivocally wrong and staffed by the only people in the galaxy too unstable and unprofessional to even be considered as Starfleet Admirals. Also, if Voyager had taken the time to show the loss and the struggle of the Maquis from their point of view, their disagreement with Starfleet wouldn't seem so trivial even in the middle of nowhere because even though the treaty is irrelevant, all that suffering afterwards still happened and is hard to just sweep away.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Aug 15, 2016 20:57:35 GMT -5
I don't know if I'd say wrong, UnarmedAndDangerousVorta - Voyager barely engages in the specifics of the Maquis issue as much as TNG and DS9 did in setting up the conflict, but I do think the enormousness is underplayed. As I rewatch Voyager I recently reached "Hunters," the episode where Voyager's crew learns the Maquis had been annihilated back in the Alpha Quadrant, and that entire worlds full of people have been slaughtered by the Dominion plays about as importantly as Janeway getting a Dear John letter (for which Chakotay is a shoulder to cry on.) What this means for, for example, Chakotay's tribe, said to inhabit a DMZ world and thus having at minimum many casualties, is never addressed (though to be fair, DS9 never addressed the issue of Native American tribes in the DMZ at all, that only came up - outside of Voyager - in that pre-Maquis episode "Journey's End.") And while TNG is sympathetic both to the Native Americans it encounters and to Ro Laren's reasons for joining the Maquis - the only character the audience actually liked or cared about before they joined, I'd note - DS9 strikes me as more ambivalent. A consistent theme with DS9's handling of the Maquis is a bunch of principled Federation do gooders don't have the guts or sometimes the wits to be half-decent terrorists (Dukat's contempt for their inability to kill him, Quark out-logicing a Vulcan Maquis in his argument about when to sue for peace, Kira's incredulousness in how Tom Riker still thinks like a Starfleet officer, and of course, Michael Eddington, the man who sees himself as the hero in his own story and that turns out to be his character flaw.) There are favourable elements, of course - Eddington has a critical view of the Federation not far from the one Sisko articulated himself in the Maquis two parter (and that they aren't so far removed is I think one reason Eddington gets under Sisko's skin) but it's probably the greyest view of the Maquis, which is, I guess, consistent for DS9.
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Post by UnarmedAndDangerousVorta on Aug 15, 2016 23:28:03 GMT -5
I don't know if I'd say wrong, UnarmedAndDangerousVorta - Voyager barely engages in the specifics of the Maquis issue as much as TNG and DS9 did in setting up the conflict, but I do think the enormousness is underplayed. As I rewatch Voyager I recently reached "Hunters," the episode where Voyager's crew learns the Maquis had been annihilated back in the Alpha Quadrant, and that entire worlds full of people have been slaughtered by the Dominion plays about as importantly as Janeway getting a Dear John letter (for which Chakotay is a shoulder to cry on.) What this means for, for example, Chakotay's tribe, said to inhabit a DMZ world and thus having at minimum many casualties, is never addressed (though to be fair, DS9 never addressed the issue of Native American tribes in the DMZ at all, that only came up - outside of Voyager - in that pre-Maquis episode "Journey's End.") And while TNG is sympathetic both to the Native Americans it encounters and to Ro Laren's reasons for joining the Maquis - the only character the audience actually liked or cared about before they joined, I'd note - DS9 strikes me as more ambivalent. A consistent theme with DS9's handling of the Maquis is a bunch of principled Federation do gooders don't have the guts or sometimes the wits to be half-decent terrorists (Dukat's contempt for their inability to kill him, Quark out-logicing a Vulcan Maquis in his argument about when to sue for peace, Kira's incredulousness in how Tom Riker still thinks like a Starfleet officer, and of course, Michael Eddington, the man who sees himself as the hero in his own story and that turns out to be his character flaw.) There are favourable elements, of course - Eddington has a critical view of the Federation not far from the one Sisko articulated himself in the Maquis two parter (and that they aren't so far removed is I think one reason Eddington gets under Sisko's skin) but it's probably the greyest view of the Maquis, which is, I guess, consistent for DS9. By wrong I mean VOY does very little to allow the viewer to sympathize with the Maquis. Very very little is shown from their point of view, and what little time is spent in their heads is with individuals most people would not want to spend much time with. If you watched only VOY you would learn a lot about the Maquis' methods but not their reasons. As you hinted at, the central conflict between the Maquis and the Federation really isn't brought up much at all in the series. The few times with all Maquis crew on screen that I can recall all have some conflict that end in violence or explicit threats of violence in contrast to the Feds who manage to talk almost everything out, whether the arguments make sense or not.
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Post by Post-Lupin on Aug 16, 2016 8:26:21 GMT -5
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Aug 16, 2016 9:20:44 GMT -5
From Post-Lupin's link: Trek plunges further into the future during the 1990s partly because series creator Gene Roddenberry was still at the wheel, pushing his world further into tomorrow. (Though seriously, that's a good article.)
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Post by Baron von Costume on Aug 16, 2016 10:59:03 GMT -5
Watching DS9 the other day and it was the episode where one of the founders impersonates an ambassador and takes over the Defiant to try to start a war to distract the federation. They end up arming the self destruct and as first officer Kira has the command code to arm/disarm it.
Narratively I get why she's first officer while they're flying around in the Defiant, but that really doesn't make a ton of sense. Bajor isn't even a federation member, her role as XO on DS9 makes perfect sense as the station belongs to them. I'd maybe even buy her being nominal XO on the Defiant because Sisko trusts her (even though Starfleet has shown to not be a huge fan of relying on the Bajoran militia or Odo) but actually being in the command codes?
Actually narrative wise I think it would have been interesting in that era if after they get the Defiant at first (before Worf comes around) Jadzia ends up being XO when they're on the defiant and Kira has to deal with it at some point...
Also man Leeta comes out of nowhere, given it was a rewatch I was like "Hey it's Leeta" but she really goes from 'hey that dabo girl is getting a lot of screen time' to 'Apparently she's one of Dax's best friends' in about 5 mins.
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Post by Powerthirteen on Aug 16, 2016 11:04:20 GMT -5
By wrong I mean VOY does very little to allow the viewer to sympathize with the Maquis. Very very little is shown from their point of view, and what little time is spent in their heads is with individuals most people would not want to spend much time with. If you watched only VOY you would learn a lot about the Maquis' methods but not their reasons. As you hinted at, the central conflict between the Maquis and the Federation really isn't brought up much at all in the series. The few times with all Maquis crew on screen that I can recall all have some conflict that end in violence or explicit threats of violence in contrast to the Feds who manage to talk almost everything out, whether the arguments make sense or not. Not really explaining why the Maquis exist is probably a failure of imagination based on Voyager being a spin-off of shows that had explored the Maquis more - Berman et al. were just assuming that anyone who cared about Voyager had already been watching TNG and DS9 enough that they would just know what the Maquis' deal was.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Aug 16, 2016 11:15:48 GMT -5
Leeta being Dax's best friend is like never mentioned again and only comes up because they needed a spare woman for Dax's lives and Rosalind Chao was not free. Leeta wasn't meant to be a recurring character so much as a punchline in a scene about Bashir, but it's one of many initially little roles on DS9 that just took off. Narratively I get why she's first officer while they're flying around in the Defiant, but that really doesn't make a ton of sense. Bajor isn't even a federation member, her role as XO on DS9 makes perfect sense as the station belongs to them. I'd maybe even buy her being nominal XO on the Defiant because Sisko trusts her (even though Starfleet has shown to not be a huge fan of relying on the Bajoran militia or Odo) but actually being in the command codes? Well the Defiant was also assigned to Bajoran space. Imagine how the Bajorans might feel if one of the most powerful warships in the quadrant was permanently assigned to their space and the one Bajoran who should have some authority over it doesn't. She also kinda keeps that authority when Worf is around and has been made the Defiant's XO (episode or two where she is in command, not Worf); there's a fan theory she may actually still be the ship's XO when it is in Bajoran space. Never not weird to me when Odo is at a station, though. Operating a ship in any capacity is mostly outside of his skillset; he's a station figure through and through (Quark actually has more experience of working on a starship, albeit as a cook.) UnarmedAndDangerousVorta I feel the empathy thing for the Maquis varies; in "Learning Curve" for example Tuvok comes off as a hardass rules stickler and the Maquis he's grilling aren't such bad people. On the other hand Hogan in season two with his complaining about Janeway is definitely to be read as being a downer.
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